ANDROGYNE, MON
AMOUR

The video, Androgyne, Mon Amour (2001), is a
realization of the composer's 1997 music theatre work for amplified male double bass player and
two digital soundtracks which incorporates a setting of six poems by
Tennessee Williams from his book of the same title, as read by Douglas
Huffman. The poems are intensely lyrical, intimate and erotic in a
celebration of gay love that is acted out, both musically and
dramatically, by the live performer interacting in a variety of
conventional and unconventional ways with the instrument which is
personified as his lover. Both the vocal part and various sound
material from the bass are digitally processed through resonators that model the characteristics of the open
strings of the instrument, thereby linking them sonically and
musically, as if each is speaking through the other. The work was
commissioned by and is dedicated to the virtuoso American double
bassist Robert Black whose recording of the work has been released on
the Cambridge Street Records CD Twin Souls. In the video, the Androgyne character is brought to life
by a male dancer, Walter Kubanek.